Common Goods: Prom(ise me you won't ask to see my dress).

'Tis the season for posing in front of a backdrop with fake flowers in pedestal vases. Teens everywhere are booking limos, shore houses, and boat cruises. They are also spending way too much to have their hair piled on top of their head and makeup spackled on their faces, but it's all in the name of tradition, a rite of passage that shouldn't be missed. Culling prom photos from Flickr made me realize just how unfortunate many prom dresses are, so I don't have to feel bad about my own--ahem--turquoise zebra print chiffon number with matching turquoise everything (eyeliner, shawl, shoes). Yeesh. Looking back on it, I should have kept that dress on for the post-prom Seaside Heights festivities. Would have been perfect Jersey Shore wear. Here, take a look at some other peoples' prom shots because I'm not showing you mine.

It's official, in my next life I'm coming back as a girl who gets to go to prom in the early '60s.

Common Goods: Senior Year, 1988.

In the old days, when people actually developed photos and picked them up from the store in paper envelopes and flipped through them in the halls of school or on a bus or anywhere public, I was the one craning my neck to see their shots. Rude as it may have been, sneaking peeks of peoples' captured moments was a favorite past time. Now, I don't have to crane, I can just click. Flickr is overflowing with candids from peoples' collections of old snapshots. Here's a selection of shots labeled Senior Year 1988. Hello hairspray.

Pre-digital photos were the definition of candid. Closed eyes, gum chewing, awkward poses, someone's not looking. That would never happen now. Not in the instant view era. Something is lost and something is gained, I guess. I just have a soft spot for the old ones. I miss the feel of glossy photo paper on my fingertips, but I love the glow of a screen.

Common Goods: Put On A Party Hat. Feel Better.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to shake off the shell shock of yesterday. I'm trying to reinvigorate what is supposed to be a fashion fan's most wonderful time of the half year. It's Fashion Week and I can't feel it. What can help? Oh, I know! Party hats from the 1970s!

Thanks Flickr. That helped.

Common Goods: Ballers.

My favorite part of The Superbowl yesterday, as it is with any football game, were the tackles. I love the visual of guys running full speed at each other followed by the crunch sound of gear making impact against gear, helmets crashing into one another, thuds. It's a cacophony of chaos that always leaves me asking how in the hell do they do that to their bodies again and again. A big reason why they can do that again and again is because of their protective padding and helmets. But, there was a time when those things were not a part of standard uniforms. A little trip down football history lane via The Commons reveals that protective gear wasn't always standard. It's shocking to see players on the field with no helmets, no giant shoulder pads, thin little shoes.

You know who is dressed properly? The coach! Look at him, walking the field in a three piece suit on practice day, and with a hat no less. Amazing. If only they still had such levels of gentlemanly dress, I'd be more interested in The Big Game. I am glad the players wear helmets now though. Big improvement.

Common Goods: Go Far

Here's an opportunity to travel, both time and space, via The New York Public Library's photostream in the Flickr Commons. It's an array of photos of Egypt and Syria, and they are stunning. The clothing in these photos--both casual and ceremonial--is gorgeous.

The photos are by various photographers and are circa anywhere between 1860 and 1920, which is a time when these images were dumbfounding to viewers. It's amazing to imagine a world that was so new and so foreign to people. Now, as web-savvy citizens, we can gain exposure to any culture, from any time, and any viewpoint whereas all those who came before us saw photos of far away lands as pictures of such exotic character that they were records of barely possible realities. It's such a gift to have access to so much visually rich material. Again, and again, and forever--I love The Commons.

Common Goods: Dutch Beach

I wax ecstatic about The Commons to you all the time, but really, there are few things I find as wonderful about our techy time as the ability to flip through the collective pictorial history of the world on Flickr. It still makes my inner geek go gaga. There's so much to explore. Take for instance the results of a random search of the words "Dutch" and "beach" (the rain was inducing a feeling of nostalgia for sunshine, and anything Dutch is cool):

These photos are from the Spaarnestad and Nationaal Archeif photostream. They are institutions that work together to preserve, catalog, and make public a vast archive of mostly Dutch documentary photos. The shots above are all various beach scenes from their collection. It is amazing to see the variation of dress that people wore to visit the sea over time. Something as simple as dipping the body in ocean water, an activity that has been done since the beginning of time, takes on so many different codes of dress. From the older "bathing costumes" that seem so impractical and so burdensome, to the man's high-waisted swim trunks, and even the nun's religious garb, dressing for the beach has a more complex history than one would think. But, the activity has always been the same. Sometimes I like to imagine the things that would feel absolutely the same even if I were to time travel, and the beach is one of them. There would still be sand between your toes, water lapping at your ankles, and sun shining down on you, whether you were dressed in a full cover bathing outfit in another century, or a tiny bikini. Some things never change, others always do.

Click here to see the rest of the Spaarnestad/ Nationaal Archief photo stream.